Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino by Samuel Butler

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point, for from this point onwards towards the choir the floor isartificially supported, and the supporting structure is dueentirely to Hugo de Montboissier. The part of the original churchwhich still remains is perhaps the wall, which forms the westernlimit of the present church. This wall is not external. It formsthe eastern wall of a large chamber with frescoes. I am not surethat this chamber does not occupy the whole space of the originalchurch.

There are a few nice votive pictures in the church, and one or twovery early frescoes, which are not without interest; but the maincharm of the place is in the architecture, and the sense at once ofage and strength which it produces. The stock things to see arethe vaults in which many of the members of the royal house ofSavoy, legitimate and illegitimate, lie buried; they need not,however, be seen.

I have said that the whole building is of much about the same date,and, unless perhaps in the residential parts, about which I can saylittle, has not been altered. This is not the view taken by theauthor of Murray's Handbook for North Italy, who says that"injudicious repairs have marred the effect of the building;" butthis writer has fallen into several errors. He talks, for example,of the "open Lombard gallery of small circular arches" as being"one of the oldest and most curious features of the building,"whereas it is obviously no older than the rest of the church, northan the keep-like construction upon which it rests. Again, he isclearly in error when he says that the "extremely beautifulcircular arch by which we pass from the staircase to the corridorleading to the church, is a vestige of the original building." Thedouble round arched portals through which we pass from the mainstaircase to the corridor are of exactly the same date as thestaircase itself, and as the rest of the church. They certainlyformed no part of Giovanni Vincenzo's edifice; for, besides beingfar too rich, they are not on a level with what remains of thatbuilding, but several feet below it. It is hard to know what thewriter means by "the original building;" he appears to think itextended to the present choir, which, he says, "retains traces ofan earlier age." The choir retains no such traces. The onlyremains of the original church are at the back of the west end,invisible from the inside of the church, and at the opposite end tothe choir. As for the church being "in a plain Gothic style," itis an extremely beautiful example of pure Lombard, of the first fewyears of the eleventh century. True, the middle arch of the threewhich divide the nave from the aisles is pointed, whereas the twoothers are round, but this is evidently done to economise space,which was here unusually costly. There was room for more than tworound arches, but not room enough for three, so it was decided todock the middle arch a little. It is a she-arch--that is to say,it has no keystone, but is formed simply by propping two segmentsof a circle one against the other. It certainly is not a Gothicarch; it is a Lombard arch, modified in an unusual manner, owing toits having been built under unusual conditions.

The visitor should on no account omit to ring the bell and ask tobe shown the open Lombard gallery already referred to as runninground the outside of the choir. It is well worth walking roundthis, if only for the view.

The official who showed us round was very kind, and as a personalfavour we were allowed to visit the fathers' private garden. Thelarge arm-chairs are made out of clipped box-trees. While on ourway to the garden we passed a spot where there was an alarmingbuzzing, and found ourselves surrounded by what appeared to be anangry swarm of bees; closer inspection showed that the host was amedley one, composed of wasps, huge hornets, hive-bees, humble-bees, flies, dragon-flies, butterflies, and all kinds of insects,flying about a single patch of ivy in full blossom, which attractedthem so strongly that they neglected everything else. I think someof them were intoxicated. If this was so, then perhaps Bacchus iscalled "ivy-crowned" because ivy-blossoms intoxicate insects, but Inever remember to have before observed that ivy-blossoms had anyspecial attraction for insects.

I have forgotten to say anything about a beam of wood which may beseen standing out at right angles from the tower to the right ofthe main building. This I believe to have been the gallows.Another like it may be seen at S. Giorio, but I have not got it inmy sketch of that place. The attendant who took us round S.Michele denied that it was the gallows, but I think it must havebeen. Also, the attendant showed us one place which is called IlSalto della belle Alda. Alda was being pursued by a soldier; topreserve her honour, she leaped from a window and fell over aprecipice some hundreds of feet below; by the intercession of theVirgin she was saved, but became so much elated that she determinedto repeat the feat. She jumped a second time from the window, butwas dashed to pieces. We were told this as being unworthy ofactual credence, but as a legend of the place. We said we found nogreat difficulty in believing the first half of the story, butcould hardly believe that any one would jump from that windowtwice. {14}

CHAPTER IX--The North Italian Priesthood

There is now a school in the sanctuary; we met the boys severaltimes. They seemed well cared for and contented. The priests whoreside in the sanctuary were courtesy itself; they took a warminterest in England, and were anxious for any information I couldgive them about the monastery near Loughborough--a name which theyhad much difficulty in pronouncing. They were perfectly tolerant,and ready to extend to others the consideration they expected forthemselves. This should not be saying much, but as things go it issaying a good deal. What indeed more can be wished for?

The faces of such priests as these--and I should say such priestsform a full half of the North Italian priesthood--are perfectlyfree from that bad furtive expression which we associate withpriestcraft, and which, when seen, cannot be mistaken: their facesare those of our own best English country clergy, with perhaps atrifle less flesh about them and a trifle more of a not unkindlyasceticism.

Comparing our own clergy with the best North Italian and Ticinesepriests, I should say there was little to choose between them. Thelatter are in a logically stronger position, and this gives themgreater courage in their opinions; the former have the advantage inrespect of money, and the more varied knowledge of the world whichmoney will command. When I say Catholics have logically theadvantage over Protestants, I mean that starting from premiseswhich both sides admit, a merely logical Protestant will findhimself driven to the Church of Rome. Most men as they grow olderwill, I think, feel this, and they will see in it the explanationof the comparatively narrow area over which the Reformationextended, and of the gain which Catholicism has made of late yearshere in England. On the other hand, reasonable people will lookwith distrust upon too much reason. The foundations of action liedeeper than reason can reach. They rest on faith--for there is noabsolutely certain incontrovertible premise which can be laid byman, any more than there is any investment for money or security inthe daily affairs of life which is absolutely unimpeachable. Thefunds are not absolutely sale; a volcano might break out under theBank of England. A railway journey is not absolutely safe; oneperson, at least, in several millions gets killed. We invest ourmoney upon faith mainly. We choose our doctor upon faith, for howlittle independent judgment can we form concerning his capacity?We choose schools for our children chiefly upon faith. The mostimportant things a man has are his body, his soul, and his money.It is generally better for him to commit these interests to thecare of others of whom he can know little, rather than be his ownmedical man, or invest his money on his own judgment; and this isnothing else than making a faith which lies deeper than reason canreach, the basis of our action in those respects which touch usmost nearly.

On the other hand, as good a case could be made out for placingreason as the foundation, inasmuch as it would be easy to show thata faith, to be worth anything, must be a reasonable one--one, thatis to say, which is based upon reason. The fact is, that faith andreason are like desire and power, or demand and supply; it isimpossible to say which comes first: they come up hand in hand,and are so small when we can first descry them, that it isimpossible to say which we first caught sight of. All we can nowsee is that each has a tendency continually to outstrip the otherby a little, but by a very little only. Strictly they are not twothings, but two aspects of one thing; for convenience sake,however, we classify them separately.

It follows, therefore--but whether it follows or no, it iscertainly true--that neither faith alone nor reason alone is asufficient guide: a man's safety lies neither in faith nor reason,but in temper--in the power of fusing faith and reason, even whenthey appear most mutually destructive. A man of temper will becertain in spite of uncertainty, and at the same time uncertain inspite of certainty; reasonable in spite of his resting mainly uponfaith rather than reason, and full of faith even when appealingmost strongly to reason. If it is asked, In what should a man havefaith? To what faith should he turn when reason has led him to aconclusion which he distrusts? the answer is, To the currentfeeling among those whom he most looks up to--looking upon himselfwith suspicion if he is either among the foremost or the laggers.In the rough, homely common sense of the community to which webelong we have as firm ground as can be got. This, though notabsolutely infallible, is secure enough for practical purposes.

As I have said, Catholic priests have rather a fascination for me--when they are not Englishmen. I should say that the best NorthItalian priests are more openly tolerant than our English clergygenerally are. I remember picking up one who was walking along aroad, and giving him a lift in my trap. Of course we fell totalking, and it came out that I was a member of the Church ofEngland. "Ebbene, caro Signore," said he when we shook hands atparting; "mi rincresce che Lei non crede come me, ma in questitempi non possiamo avere tutti i medesimi principii." {15}

I travelled another day from Susa to S. Ambrogio with a priest, whotold me he took in "The Catholic Times," and who was well up todate on English matters. Being myself a Conservative, I found hisopinions sound on all points but one--I refer to the Irishquestion: he had no sympathy with the obstructionists inParliament, but nevertheless thought the Irish were harshlytreated. I explained matters as well as I could, and found himvery willing to listen to our side of the question.

The one thing, he said, which shocked him with the English, was themanner in which they went about distributing tracts upon theContinent. I said no one could deplore the practice moreprofoundly than myself, but that there were stupid and conceitedpeople in every country, who would insist upon thrusting theiropinions upon people who did not want them. He replied that theItalians travelled not a little in England, but that he was surenot one of them would dream of offering Catholic tracts to people,for example, in the streets of London. Certainly I have never seenan Italian to be guilty of such rudeness. It seems to me that itis not only toleration that is a duty; we ought to go beyond thisnow; we should conform, when we are among a sufficient number ofthose who would not understand our refusal to do so; any othercourse is to attach too much importance at once to our own opinionsand to those of our opponents. By all means let a man stand by hisconvictions when the occasion requires, but let him reserve hisstrength, unless it is imperatively called for. Do not let himexaggerate trifles, and let him remember that everything is atrifle in comparison with the not giving offence to a large numberof kindly, simple-minded people. Evolution, as we all know, is thegreat doctrine of modern times; the very essence of evolutionconsists in the not shocking anything too violently, but enablingit to mistake a new action for an old one, without "making believe"too much.

One day when I was eating my lunch near a fountain, there came up amoody, meditative hen, crooning plaintively after her wont. Ithrew her a crumb of bread while she was still a good way off, andthen threw more, getting her to come a little closer and a littlecloser each time; at last she actually took a piece from my hand.She did not quite like it, but she did it. This is the evolutionprinciple; and if we wish those who differ from us to understandus, it is the only method to proceed upon. I have sometimesthought that some of my friends among the priests have beentreating me as I treated the meditative hen. But what of that?They will not kill and eat me, nor take my eggs. Whatever,therefore, promotes a more friendly feeling between us must be puregain.

The mistake our advanced Liberals make is that of flinging much toolarge pieces of bread at a time, and flinging them at their hen,instead of a little way off her. Of course the hen is flutteredand driven away. Sometimes, too, they do not sufficientlydistinguish between bread and stones.

As a general rule, the common people treat the priestsrespectfully, but once I heard several attacking one warmly on thescore of eternal punishment. "Sara," said one, "per cento anni,per cinque cento, per mille o forse per dieci mille anni, ma nonsara eterna; perche il Dio e un uomo forte--grande, generoso, dibuon cuore." {16} An Italian told me once that if ever I came upona priest whom I wanted to tease, I was to ask him if he knew aplace called La Torre Pellice. I have never yet had the chance ofdoing this; for, though I am fairly quick at seeing whether I amlikely to get on with a priest or no, I find the priest isgenerally fairly quick too; and I am no sooner in a diligence orrailway carriage with an unsympathetic priest, than he curlshimself round into a moral ball and prays horribly--bristling outwith collects all over like a cross-grained spiritual hedgehog.Partly, therefore, from having no wish to go out of my way to makemyself obnoxious, and partly through the opposite party beingdetermined that I shall not get the chance, the question about LaTorre Pellice has never come off, and I do not know what a priestwould say if the subject were introduced,--but I did get a talkingabout La Torre Pellice all the same.

I was going from Turin to Pinerolo, and found myself seatedopposite a fine-looking elderly gentleman who was reading a paperheaded, "Le Temoin, Echo des Vallees Vaudoises": for the Vaudois,or Waldenses, though on the Italian side of the Alps, are French inlanguage and perhaps in origin. I fell to talking with thisgentleman, and found he was on his way to La Torre Pellice, theheadquarters of indigenous Italian evangelicism. He told me therewere about 25,000 inhabitants of these valleys, and that they werewithout exception Protestant, or rather that they had neveraccepted Catholicism, but had retained the primitive Apostolicfaith in its original purity. He hinted to me that they weredescendants of some one or more of the lost ten tribes of Israel.The English, he told me (meaning, I gather, the English of theEngland that affects Exeter Hall), had done great things for theinhabitants of La Torre at different times, and there were streetscalled the Via Williams and Via Beckwith. They were, he said, avery growing sect, and had missionaries and establishments in allthe principal cities in North Italy; in fact, so far as I couldgather, they were as aggressive as malcontents generally are, and,Italians though they were, would give away tracts just as readilyas we do. I did not, therefore, go to La Torre.

Sometimes priests say things, as a matter of course, which wouldmake any English clergyman's hair stand on end. At one town thereis a remarkable fourteenth-century bridge, commonly known as "TheDevil's Bridge." I was sketching near this when a jolly old priestwith a red nose came up and began a conversation with me. He wasevidently a popular character, for every one who passed greetedhim. He told me that the devil did not really build the bridge. Isaid I presumed not, for he was not in the habit of spending histime so well.

"I wish he had built it," said my friend; "for then perhaps hewould build us some more."

"Or we might even get a church out of him," said I, a little slyly.

"Ha, ha, ha! we will convert him, and make a good Christian of himin the end."

When will our Protestantism, or Rationalism, or whatever it may be,sit as lightly upon ourselves?

CHAPTER X--S. Ambrogio and Neighbourhood

Since the opening of the railway, the old inn where the diligencesand private carriages used to stop has been closed; but I was made,in a homely way, extremely comfortable at the Scudo di Francia,kept by Signor Bonaudo and his wife. I stayed here over afortnight, during which I made several excursions.

One day I went to San Giorio, as it is always written though SanGiorgio is evidently intended. Here there is a ruined castle,beautifully placed upon a hill; this castle shows well from therailway shortly after leaving Bussoleno station, on the right handgoing towards Turin. Having been struck with it, I went by trainto Bussoleno (where there is much that I was unwillingly compelledto neglect), and walked back to San Giorio. On my way, however, Isaw a patch of Cima-da-Conegliano-looking meadow-land on a hillsome way above me, and on this there rose from among the chestnutswhat looked like a castellated mansion. I thought it well to makea digression to this, and when I got there, after a lovely walk,knocked at the door, having been told by peasants that there wouldbe no difficulty about my taking a look round. The place is calledthe Castel Burrello, and is tenanted by an old priest who hasretired hither to end his days. I sent in my card and business byhis servant, and by-and-by he came out to me himself.

He then explained to me that the castle had never been a properlyfortified place, being intended only as a summer residence for thebarons of Bussoleno, who used to resort hither during the extremeheat, if times were tolerably quiet. After this he left me.Taking him at his word, I walked all round, but there was only ashell remaining; the rest of the building had evidently been burnt,even the wing in which the present proprietor resides being, if Iremember rightly, modernised. The site, however, and the slopingmeadows which the castle crowns, are of extreme beauty.

I now walked down to San Giorio, and found a small inn where Icould get bread, butter, eggs, and good wine. I was waited upon bya good-natured boy, the son of the landlord, who was accompanied bya hawk that sat always either upon his hand or shoulder. As Ilooked at the pair I thought they were very much alike, andcertainly they were very much in love with one another. Afterdinner I sketched the castle. While I was doing so, a gentlemantold me that a large breach in the wall was made a few years ago,and a part of the wall found to be hollow, the bottom of the hollowpart being unwittingly removed, there fell through a skeleton in afull suit of armour. Others, whom I asked, had heard nothing ofthis.

Talking of hawks, I saw a good many boys with tame young hawks inthe villages round about. There was a tame hawk at the station ofS. Ambrogio. The station-master said it used to go now and againto the church-steeple to catch sparrows, but would always return inan hour or two. Before my stay was over it got in the way of apassing train and was run over.

Young birds are much eaten in this neighbourhood. The houses andbarns, not to say the steeples of the churches, are to be seenstuck about with what look like terra-cotta water-bottles with thenecks outwards. Two or three may be seen in the illustration on p.113 outside the window that comes out of the roof, on the left-handside of the picture. I have seen some outside an Italianrestaurant near Lewisham. They are artificial bird's-nests for thesparrows to build in: as soon as the young are old enough they aretaken and made into a pie. The church-tower near the Hotel de laPoste at Lanzo is more stuck about with them than any otherbuilding that I have seen.

Swallows and hawks are about the only birds whose young are noteaten. One afternoon I met a boy with a jay on his finger: havingimprudently made advances to this young gentleman in the hopes ofgetting acquainted with the bird, he said he thought I had betterbuy it and have it for my dinner; but I did not fancy it. Anotherday I saw the padrona at the inn-door talking to a lad, who pulledopen his shirt-front and showed some twenty or thirty nestlings inthe simple pocket formed by his shirt on the one side and his skinupon the other. The padrona wanted me to say I should like to eatthem, in which case she would have bought them; but one cannot getall the nonsense one hears at home out of one's head in a moment,and I am afraid I preached a little. The padrona, who is one ofthe most fascinating women in the world, and at sixty is stillhandsome, looked a little vexed and puzzled: she admitted thetruth of what I said, but pleaded that the boys found it very hardto gain a few soldi, and if people didn't kill and eat one thing,they would another. The result of it all was that I determined forthe future to leave young birds to their fate; they and the boysmust settle that matter between themselves. If the young bird wasa boy, and the boy a young bird, it would have been the boy who wastaken ruthlessly from his nest and eaten. An old bird has no rightto have a homestead, and a young bird has no right to exist at all,unless they can keep both homestead and existence out of the way ofboys who are in want of half-pence. It is all perfectly right, andwhen we go and stay among these charming people, let us do so aslearners, not as teachers.

I watched the padrona getting my supper ready. With what art donot these people manage their fire. The New Zealand Maoris say thewhite man is a fool: "He makes a large fire, and then has to sitaway from it; the Maori makes a small fire, and sits over it." Thescheme of an Italian kitchen-fire is that there shall always be onestout log smouldering on the hearth, from which a few live coalsmay be chipped off if wanted, and put into the small squaregratings which are used for stewing or roasting. Any warming up,or shorter boiling, is done on the Maori principle of making asmall fire of light dry wood, and feeding it frequently. Theyeconomise everything. Thus I saw the padrona wash some hen's eggswell in cold water; I did not see why she should wash them beforeboiling them, but presently the soup which I was to have for mysupper began to boil. Then she put the eggs into the soup andboiled them in it.

After supper I had a talk with the padrone, who told me I wasworking too hard. "Totam noctem," said he in Latin, "lavoravimuset nihil incepimus." ("We have laboured all night and takennothing.") "Oh!" he continued, "I have eyes and ears in my head."And as he spoke, with his right hand he drew down his lower eyelid,and with his left pinched the pig of his ear. "You will be ill ifyou go on like this." Then he laid his hand along his cheek, puthis head on one side, and shut his eyes, to imitate a sick man inbed. On this I arranged to go an excursion with him on the dayfollowing to a farm he had a few miles off, and to which he wentevery Friday.

We went to Borgone station, and walked across the valley to avillage called Villar Fochiardo. Thence we began gently to ascend,passing under some noble chestnuts. Signor Bonaudo said that thisis one of the best chestnut-growing districts in Italy. A goodtree, he told me, would give its forty francs a year. This seemsas though chestnut-growing must be lucrative, for an acre shouldcarry some five or six trees, and there is no outlay to speak of.Besides the chestnuts, the land gives a still further return by wayof the grass that grows beneath them. Walnuts do not yield nearlyso much per tree as chestnuts do. In three-quarters of an hour orso we reached Signor Bonaudo's farm, which was called the Casina diBanda. The buildings had once been a monastery, founded at thebeginning of the seventeenth century and secularised by the firstNapoleon, but had been purchased from the state a few years ago bySignor Bonaudo, in partnership with three others, after the passingof the Church Property Act. It is beautifully situated somehundreds of feet above the valley, and commands a lovely view ofthe Comba, as it is called, or Combe of Susa. The accompanyingsketch will give an idea of the view looking towards Turin. Thelarge building on the hill is, of course, S. Michele. The verydistant dome is the Superga on the other side of Turin.

The first thing Signor Bonaudo did when he got to his farm was tosee whether the water had been duly turned on to his own portion ofthe estate. Each of the four purchasers had his separate portion,and each had a right to the water for thirty-six hours per week.Signor Bonaudo went round with his hind at once, and saw that thedams in the ducts were so opened or closed that his own land wasbeing irrigated.

Nothing can exceed the ingenuity with which the little canals arearranged so that each part of a meadow, however undulating, shallbe saturated equally. The people are very jealous of their waterrights, and indeed not unnaturally, for the yield of grass dependsin very great measure upon the amount of irrigation which the landcan get.

The matter of the water having been seen to, we went to themonastery, or, as it now is, the homestead. As we entered thefarmyard we found two cows fighting, and a great strapping wenchbelabouring them in order to separate them. "Let them alone," saidthe padrone; "let them fight it out here on the level ground."Then he explained to me that he wished them to find out which wasmistress, and fall each of them into her proper place, for if theyfought on the rough hillsides they might easily break each other'snecks.

We walked all over the monastery. The day was steamy with frequentshowers, and thunderstorms in the air. The rooms were dark andmouldy, and smelt rather of rancid cheese, but it was not a badsort of rambling old place, and if thoroughly done up would make adelightful inn. There is a report that there is hidden treasurehere. I do not know a single old castle or monastery in NorthItaly about which no such report is current, but in the presentcase there seems more than usual ground (so the hind told me) forbelieving the story to be well founded, for the monks did certainlysmelt the quartz in the neighbourhood, and as no gold was everknown to leave the monastery, it is most likely that all theenormous quantity which they must have made in the course of sometwo centuries is still upon the premises, if one could only layone's hands upon it. So reasonable did this seem, that about twoyears ago it was resolved to call in a somnambulist or clairvoyantfrom Turin, who, when he arrived at the spot, became seized withconvulsions, betokening of course that there was treasure not faroff: these convulsions increased till he reached the choir of thechapel, and here he swooned--falling down as if dead, and beingresuscitated with apparent difficulty. He afterwards declared thatit was in this chapel that the treasure was hidden. In spite ofall this, however, the chapel has not been turned upside down andransacked, perhaps from fear of offending the saint to whom it isdedicated.

In the chapel there are a few votive pictures, but not verystriking ones. I hurriedly sketched one, but have failed to do itjustice. The hind saw me copying the little girl in bed, and I hadan impression as though he did not quite understand my motive. Itold him I had a dear little girl of my own at home, who had beenalarmingly ill in the spring, and that this picture reminded me ofher. This made everything quite comfortable.

We had brought up our dinner from S. Ambrogio, and ate it in whathad been the refectory of the monastery. The windows were broken,and the swallows, who had built upon the ceiling inside the room,kept flying close to us all the time we were eating. Great mallowsand hollyhocks peered in at the window, and beyond them there was apretty Devonshire-looking orchard. The noontide sun streamed in atintervals between the showers.

After dinner we went "al cresto della collina"--to the crest of thehill--to use Signor Bonaudo's words, and looked down upon S.Giorio, and the other villages of the Combe of Susa. Nothing couldbe more delightful. Then, getting under the chestnuts, I made thesketch which I have already given. While making it I was accostedby an underjawed man (there is an unusually large percentage ofunderjawed people in the neighbourhood of S. Ambrogio), who askedwhether my taking this sketch must not be considered as a sign thatwar was imminent. The people in this valley have bitter andcomparatively recent experience of war, and are alarmed at anythingwhich they fancy may indicate its recurrence. Talking further withhim, he said, "Here we have no signori; we need not take off ourhats to any one except the priest. We grow all we eat, we spin andweave all we wear; if all the world except our own valley wereblotted out, it would make no difference, so long as we remain aswe are and unmolested." He was a wild, weird, St. John the Baptistlooking person, with shaggy hair, and an Andrea Mantegnesquefeeling about him. I gave him a pipe of English tobacco, which heseemed to relish, and so we parted.

I stayed a week or so at another place not a hundred miles fromSusa, but I will not name it, for fear of causing offence. It wassituated high, above the valley of the Dora, among the pastures,and just about the upper limit of the chestnuts. It offers asummer retreat, of which the people in Turin avail themselves inconsiderable numbers. The inn was a more sophisticated one thanSignor Bonaudo's house at S. Ambrogio, and there were several Turinpeople staying there as well as myself, but there were no English.During the whole time I was in that neighbourhood I saw not asingle English, French, or German tourist. The ways of the inn,therefore, were exclusively Italian, and I had a better opportunityof seeing the Italians as they are among themselves than I ever hadbefore.

Nothing struck me more than the easy terms on which every one,including the waiter, appeared to be with every one else. This,which in England would be impossible, is here not only possible buta matter of course, because the general standard of good breedingis distinctly higher than it is among ourselves. I do not mean tosay that there are no rude or unmannerly Italians, but that thereare fewer in proportion than there are in any other nation withwhich I have acquaintance. This is not to be wondered at, for theItalians have had a civilisation for now some three or fourthousand years, whereas all other nations are, comparativelyspeaking, new countries, with a something even yet of colonialroughness pervading them. As the colonies to England, so isEngland to Italy in respect of the average standard of courtesy andgood manners. In a new country everything has a tendency to gowild again, man included; and the longer civilisation has existedin any country the more trustworthy and agreeable will itsinhabitants be. This preface is necessary, as explaining how it ispossible that things can be done in Italy without offence whichwould be intolerable elsewhere; but I confess to feeling ratherhopeless of being able to describe what I actually saw withoutgiving a wrong impression concerning it.

Among the visitors was the head confidential clerk of a well-knownMilanese house, with his wife and sister. The sister was aninvalid, and so also was the husband, but the wife was a verypretty woman and a very merry one. The waiter was a good-lookingyoung fellow of about five-and-twenty, and between him and SignoraBonvicino--for we will say this was the clerk's name--there sprangup a violent flirtation, all open and above board. The waiter wasevidently very fond of her, but said the most atrociously impudentthings to her from time to time. Dining under the veranda at thenext table I heard the Signora complain that the cutlets wereburnt. So they were--very badly burnt. The waiter looked at themfor a moment--threw her a contemptuous glance, clearly intended toprovoke war--"Chi non ha appetito {17} . . . " he exclaimed, andwas moving off with a shrug of the shoulders. The Signorarecognising a challenge, rose instantly from the table, andcatching him by the nape of his neck, kicked him deftly downstairsinto the kitchen, both laughing heartily, and the husband andsister joining. I never saw anything more neatly done. Of course,in a few minutes some fresh and quite unexceptionable cutlets madetheir appearance.

Another morning, when I came down to breakfast, I found analtercation going on between the same pair as to whether the lady'snose was too large or not. It was not at all too large. It was avery pretty little nose. The waiter was maintaining that it wastoo large, and the lady that it was not.

One evening Signor Bonvicino told me that his employer had a verylarge connection in England, and that though he had never been inLondon, he knew all about it almost as well as if he had. Thegreat centre of business, he said, was in Red Lion Square. It washere his employer's agent resided, and this was a more importantpart than even the city proper. I threw a drop or two of coldwater on this, but without avail. Presently I asked what thewaiter's name was, not having been able to catch it. I asked thisof the Signora, and saw a little look on her face as though shewere not quite prepared to reply. Not understanding this, Irepeated my question.

"Oh! his name is Cesare," was the answer.

"Cesare! but that is not the name I hear you call him by."

"Well, perhaps not; we generally call him Cricco," {18} and shelooked as if she had suddenly remembered having been told thatthere were such things as prigs, and might, for aught she knew, bein the presence of one of these creatures now.

The Roman Catholic religion, if left to itself and not compelled tobe introspective, is more kindly and less given to taking offencethan outsiders generally believe. At the Sacro Monte of Varesethey sell little round tin boxes that look like medals, and containpictures of all the chapels. In the lid of the box there is ashort printed account of the Sacro Monte, which winds up with thewords, "La religione e lo stupendo panorama tirano numerosi edallegri visitatori." {20}

Our people are much too earnest to allow that a view could haveanything to do with taking people up to the top of a hill wherethere was a cathedral, or that people could be "merry" while on anerrand connected with religion.

On leaving this place I wanted to say good-bye to SignoraBonvicino, and could not find her; after a time I heard she was atthe fountain, so I went and found her on her knees washing herhusband's and her own clothes, with her pretty round arms barenearly to the shoulder.

It never so much as occurred to her to mind being caught at thiswork.

Some months later, shortly before winter, I returned to the sameinn for a few days, and found it somewhat demoralised. There hadbeen grand doings of some sort, and, though the doings were over,the moral and material debris were not yet quite removed. Thefamiglia Bonvicino was gone, and so was Cricco. The cook, the newwaiter, and the landlord (who sings a good comic song uponoccasion) had all drunk as much wine as they could carry; and lateron I found Veneranda, the one-eyed old chambermaid, lying upon mybed fast asleep. I afterwards heard that, in spite of the autumnalweather, the landlord spent his night on the grass under thechestnuts, while the cook was found at four o'clock in the morninglying at full length upon a table under the veranda. Next day,however, all had become normal again.

Among our fellow-guests during this visit was a fiery-facedeructive butcher from Turin. A difference of opinion having arisenbetween him and his wife, I told the Signora that I would rather bewrong with her than right with her husband. The lady wasdelighted.

"Do you hear that, my dear?" said she. "He says he had rather bewrong with me than right with you. Isn't he a naughty man?"

She said that if she died her husband was going to marry a girl offifteen. I said: "And if your husband dies, ma'am, send me adispatch to London, and I will come and marry you myself." Theywere both delighted at this.

She told us the thunder had upset her and frightened her.

"Has it given you a headache?"

She replied: No; but it had upset her stomach. No doubt thethunder had shaken her stomach's confidence in the soundness of itsopinions, so as to weaken its proselytising power. By and by,seeing that she ate a pretty good dinner, I inquired:

"Is your stomach better now, ma'am?"

And she said it was. Next day my stomach was bad too.

I told her I had been married, but had lost my wife and haddetermined never to marry again till I could find a widow whom Ihad admired as a married woman.

Giovanni, the new waiter, explained to me that the butcher was notreally bad or cruel at all. I shook my head at him and said Iwished I could think so, but that his poor wife looked very ill andunhappy.

The housemaid's name was La Rosa Mistica.

The landlord was a favourite with all the guests. Every one pattedhim on the cheeks or the head, or chucked him under the chin, ordid something nice and friendly at him. He was a little man with aface like a russet pippin apple, about sixty-five years old, butmade of iron. He was going to marry a third wife, and six youngwomen had already come up from S. Ambrogio to be looked at. I sawone of them. She was a Visigoth-looking sort of person and wore alarge wobbly-brimmed straw hat; she was about forty, and gave methe impression of being familiar with labour of all kinds. Hepressed me to give my opinion of her, but I sneaked out of it bydeclaring that I must see a good deal more of the lady than I wasever likely to see before I could form an opinion at all.

On coming down from the sanctuary one afternoon I heard thelandlord's comic song, of which I have spoken above. It was aboutthe musical instruments in a band: the trumpet did this, theclarinet did that, the flute went tootle, tootle, tootle, and therewas an appropriate motion of the hand for every instrument. I wasa little disappointed with it, but the landlord said I was tooserious and the only thing that would cure me was to learn the songmyself. He said the butcher had learned it already, so it was nothard, which indeed it was not. It was about as hard as:

The battle of the NileI was there all the whileAt the battle of the Nile.

I had to learn it and sing it (Heaven help me, for I have no morevoice than a mouse!), and the landlord said that the motion of mylittle finger was very promising.

The chestnuts are never better than after harvest, when they areheavy-laden with their pale green hedgehog-like fruit and alivewith people swarming among their branches, pruning them while theleaves are still good winter food for cattle. Why, I wonder, isthere such an especial charm about the pruning of trees? Who doesnot feel it? No matter what the tree is, the poplar of France, orthe brookside willow or oak coppice of England, or the chestnuts ormulberries of Italy, all are interesting when being pruned, or whenpruned just lately. A friend once consulted me casually about apicture on which he was at work, and complained that a row of treesin it was without sufficient interest. I was fortunate enough tobe able to help him by saying: "Prune them freely and put amagpie's nest in one of them," and the trees became interesting atonce. People in trees always look well, or rather, I should say,trees always look well with people in them, or indeed with anyliving thing in them, especially when it is of a kind that is notcommonly seen in them; and the measured lop of the bill-hook and,by and by, the click as a bough breaks and the lazy crash as itfalls over on to the ground, are as pleasing to the ear as is thebough-bestrewn herbage to the eye.

To what height and to what slender boughs do not these hardyclimbers trust themselves. It is said that the coming man is to betoeless. I will venture for it that he will not be toeless ifthese chestnut-pruning men and women have much to do with hisdevelopment. Let the race prune chestnuts for a couple of hundredgenerations or so, and it will have little trouble with its toes.Of course, the pruners fall sometimes, but very rarely. I rememberin the Val Mastallone seeing a votive picture of a poor lady in ashort petticoat and trousers trimmed with red round the bottom whowas falling head foremost from the top of a high tree, whose leavesshe had been picking, and was being saved by the intervention oftwo saints who caught her upon two gridirons. Such accidents,however, and, I should think, such interventions, are exceedinglyrare, and as a rule the peasants venture freely into places whichin England no one but a sailor or a steeple-jack would attempt.

And so we left this part of Italy, wishing that more Hugo deMontboissiers had committed more crimes and had had to expiate themby building more sanctuaries.

CHAPTER XI--Lanzo

From S. Ambrogio we went to Turin, a city so well known that I neednot describe it. The Hotel Europa is the best, and, indeed, one ofthe best hotels on the continent. Nothing can exceed it forcomfort and good cookery. The gallery of old masters contains somegreat gems. Especially remarkable are two pictures of Tobias andthe angel, by Antonio Pollaiuolo and Sandro Botticelli; and amagnificent tempera painting of the Crucifixion, by GaudenzioFerrari--one of his very finest works. There are also severalother pictures by the same master, but the Crucifixion is the best.

From Turin I went alone to Lanzo, about an hour and a half'srailway journey from Turin, and found a comfortable inn, the Hotelde la Poste. There is a fine fourteenth-century tower here, andthe general effect of the town is good.

One morning while I was getting my breakfast, English fashion, withsome cutlets to accompany my bread and butter, I saw an elderlyItalian gentleman, with his hand up to his chin, eyeing me withthoughtful interest. After a time he broke silence.

"Ed il latte," he said, "serve per la suppa." {21}

I said that that was the view we took of it. He thought it over awhile, and then feelingly exclaimed -

"Oh bel!"

Soon afterwards he left me with the words -

"La! dunque! cerrea! chow! stia bene."

"La" is a very common close to an Italian conversation. I used tobe a little afraid of it at first. It sounds rather like saying,"There, that's that. Please to bear in mind that I talked to youvery nicely, and let you bore me for a long time; I think I havenow done the thing handsomely, so you'll be good enough to score meone and let me go." But I soon found out that it was quite afriendly and civil way of saying good-bye.

The "dunque" is softer; it seems to say, "I cannot bring myself tosay so sad a word as 'farewell,' but we must both of us know thatthe time has come for us to part, and so" -

"Cerrea" is an abbreviation and corruption of "di sua Signoria,"--"by your highness's leave." "Chow" I have explained already."Stia bene" is simply "farewell."

The principal piazza of Lanzo is nice. In the upper part of thetown there is a large school or college. One can see into theschool through a grating from the road. I looked down, and sawthat the boys had cut their names all over the desks, just asEnglish boys would do. They were very merry and noisy, and thoughthere was a priest standing at one end of the room, he let them domuch as they liked, and they seemed quite happy. I heard one boyshout out to another, "Non c' e pericolo," in answer to somethingthe other had said. This is exactly the "no fear" of America andthe colonies. Near the school there is a field on the slope of thehill which commands a view over the plain. A woman was mowingthere, and, by way of making myself agreeable, I remarked that theview was fine. "Yes, it is," she answered; "you can see all thetrains."

The baskets with which the people carry things in thisneighbourhood are of a different construction from any I have seenelsewhere. They are made to fit all round the head like somethingbetween a saddle and a helmet, and at the same time to rest uponthe shoulders--the head being, as it were, ensaddled by the basket,and the weight being supported by the shoulders as well as by thehead. Why is it that such contrivances as this should prevail inone valley and not in another? If, one is tempted to argue, theplan is a convenient one, why does it not spread further? Ifinconvenient, why has it spread so far? If it is good in thevalley of the Stura, why is it not also good in the contiguousvalley of the Dora? There must be places where people usinghelmet-made baskets live next door to people who use baskets thatare borne entirely by back and shoulders. Why do not the people inone or other of these houses adopt their neighbour's basket? Notbecause people are not amenable to conviction, for within a certainradius from the source of the invention they are convinced to aman. Nor again is it from any insuperable objection to a change ofhabit. The Stura people have changed their habit--possibly for theworse; but if they have changed it for the worse, how is it they donot find it out and change again?

Take, again, the pane Grissino, from which the neighbourhood ofTurin has derived its nickname of il Grissinotto. It is made inlong sticks, rather thicker than a tobacco pipe, and eats crisplike toast. It is almost universally preferred to ordinary breadby the inhabitants of what was formerly Piedmont, but beyond theselimits it is rarely seen. Why so? Either it is good or not good.If not good, how has it prevailed over so large an area? If good,why does it not extend its empire? The Reformation is another casein point: granted that Protestantism is illogical, how is it thatso few within a given area can perceive it to be so? The samequestion arises in respect of the distribution of many plants andanimals; the reason of the limits which some of them cannot pass,being, indeed, perfectly clear, but as regards perhaps the greaternumber of them, undiscoverable. The upshot of it is that things donot in practice find their perfect level any more than water doesso, but are liable to disturbance by way of tides and localcurrents, or storms. It is in his power to perceive and profit bythese irregularities that the strength or weakness of a commercialman will be apparent,

One day I made an excursion from Lanzo to a place, the name ofwhich I cannot remember, but which is not far from the Groscavalloglacier. Here I found several Italians staying to take the air,and among them one young gentleman, who told me he was writing abook upon this neighbourhood, and was going to illustrate it withhis own drawings. This naturally interested me, and I encouragedhim to tell me more, which he was nothing loth to do. He said hehad a passion for drawing, and was making rapid progress; but therewas one thing that held him back--the not having any Conte chalk:if he had but this, all his difficulties would vanish.Unfortunately I had no Conte chalk with me, I but I asked to seethe drawings, and was shown about twenty, all of which greatlypleased me. I at once proposed an exchange, and have thus becomepossessed of the two which I reproduce here. Being pencildrawings, and not done with a view to Mr. Dawson's process, theyhave suffered somewhat in reproduction, but I decided to let themsuffer rather than attempt to copy them. What can be moreabsolutely in the spirit of the fourteenth century than thedrawings given above? They seem as though done by some fourteenth-century painter who had risen from the dead. And to show that theyare no rare accident, I will give another (p. 138), also done by anentirely self-taught Italian, and intended to represent the castleof Laurenzana in the neighbourhood of Potenza.

If the reader will pardon a digression, I will refer to a moreimportant example of an old master born out of due time. One day,in the cathedral at Varallo, I saw a picture painted on linen ofwhich I could make nothing. It was not old and it was not modern.The expression of the Virgin's face was lovely, and there was moreindividuality than is commonly found in modern Italian work.Modern Italian colour is generally either cold and dirty, or elsestaring. The colour here was tender, and reminded me of fifteenth-century Florentine work. The folds of the drapery were not modern;there was a sense of effort about them, as though the painter hadtried to do them better, but had been unable to get them as freeand flowing as he had wished. Yet the picture was not old; to allappearance it might have been painted a matter of ten years; noragain was it an echo--it was a sound: the archaism was notaffected; on the contrary, there was something which said, asplainly as though the living painter had spoken it, that hissomewhat constrained treatment was due simply to his having beenpuzzled with the intricacy of what he saw, and giving as much as hecould with a hand which was less advanced than his judgment. Bysome strange law it comes about that the imperfection of men whoare at this stage of any art is the only true perfection; for thewisdom of the wise is set at naught, and the foolishness of thesimple is chosen, and it is out of the mouths of babes andsucklings that strength is ordained.

Unable to arrive at any conclusion, I asked the sacristan, and wastold it was by a certain Dedomenici of Rossa, in the Val Sesia, andthat it had been painted some forty or fifty years ago. Iexpressed my surprise, and the sacristan continued: "Yes, but whatis most wonderful about him is that he never left his nativevalley, and never had any instruction, but picked up his art forhimself as best he could."

I have been twice to Varallo since, to see whether I should changemy mind, but have not done so. If Dedomenici had been a Florentineor Venetian in the best times, he would have done as well as thebest; as it is, his work is remarkable. He died about 1840, veryold, and he kept on improving to the last. His last work--at leastI was told upon the spot that it was his last--is in a littleroadside chapel perched high upon a rock, and dedicated, if Iremember rightly, to S. Michele, on the path from Fobello in theVal Mastallone to Taponaccio. It is a Madonna and child in clouds,with two full-length saints standing beneath--all the figures life-size. I came upon this chapel quite accidentally one evening, and,looking in, recognised the altar-piece as a Dedomenici. I inquiredat the next village who had painted it, and was told, "un certoDedomenici da Rossa." I was also told that he was nearly eightyyears old when he painted this picture. I went a couple of yearsago to reconsider it, and found that I remained much of my originalopinion. I do not think that any of my readers who care about thehistory of Italian art will regret having paid it a visit.

Such men are more common in Italy than is believed. There is afresco of the Crucifixion outside the Campo Santo at Fusio, in theCanton Ticino, done by a local artist, which, though far inferiorto the work of Dedomenici, is still remarkable. The painterevidently knows nothing of the rules of his art, but he has madeChrist on the cross bowing His head towards the souls in purgatory,instead of in the conventional fine frenzy to which we areaccustomed. There is a storm which has caught and is sweeping thedrapery round Christ's body. The angel's wings are no longerwhite, but many coloured as in old times, and there is a touch ofhumour in the fact that of the six souls in purgatory, four arewomen and only two men. The expression on Christ's face is veryfine, but otherwise the drawing could not well be more imperfectthan it is.

CHAPTER XII--Considerations on the Decline of Italian Art

Those who know the Italians will see no sign of decay about them.They are the quickest witted people in the world, and at the sametime have much more of the old Roman steadiness than they aregenerally credited with. Not only is there no sign ofdegeneration, but, as regards practical matters, there is everysign of health and vigorous development. The North Italians aremore like Englishmen, both in body and mind, than any other peoplewhom I know; I am continually meeting Italians whom I should takefor Englishmen if I did not know their nationality. They have allour strong points, but they have more grace and elasticity of mindthan we have.

Priggishness is the sin which doth most easily beset middle-classand so-called educated Englishmen: we call it purity and culture,but it does not much matter what we call it. It is the almostinevitable outcome of a university education, and will last as longas Oxford and Cambridge do, but not much longer.

Lord Beaconsfield sent Lothair to Oxford; it is with great pleasurethat I see he did not send Endymion. My friend Jones called myattention to this, and we noted that the growth observablethroughout Lord Beaconsfield's life was continued to the end. Hewas one of those who, no matter how long he lived, would have beenalways growing: this is what makes his later novels so much betterthan those of Thackeray or Dickens. There was something of thechild about him to the last. Earnestness was his greatest danger,but if he did not quite overcome it (as who indeed can? It is thelast enemy that shall be subdued), he managed to veil it with afair amount of success. As for Endymion, of course if LordBeaconsfield had thought Oxford would be good for him, he could, asJones pointed out to me, just as well have killed Mr. Ferrars ayear or two later. We feel satisfied, therefore, that Endymion'sexclusion from a university was carefully considered, and are glad.

I will not say that priggishness is absolutely unknown among theNorth Italians; sometimes one comes upon a young Italian who wantsto learn German, but not often. Priggism, or whatever thesubstantive is, is as essentially a Teutonic vice as holiness is aSemitic characteristic; and if an Italian happens to be a prig, hewill, like Tacitus, invariably show a hankering after Germaninstitutions. The idea, however, that the Italians were ever afiner people than they are now, will not pass muster with those whoknow them.

At the same time, there can be no doubt that modern Italian art isin many respects as bad as it was once good. I will confine myselfto painting only. The modern Italian painters, with very fewexceptions, paint as badly as we do, or even worse, and theirmotives are as poor as is their painting. At an exhibition ofmodern Italian pictures, I generally feel that there is hardly apicture on the walls but is a sham--that is to say, painted notfrom love of this particular subject and an irresistible desire topaint it, but from a wish to paint an academy picture, and winmoney or applause.

The same holds good in England, and in all other countries that Iknow of. There is very little tolerable painting anywhere. Insome kinds, indeed, of black and white work the present age isstrong. The illustrations to "Punch," for example, are often asgood as anything that can be imagined. We know of nothing likethem in any past age or country. This is the one kind of art--andit is a very good one--in which we excel as distinctly as the ageof Phidias excelled in sculpture. Leonardo da Vinci would neverhave succeeded in getting his drawings accepted at 85 Fleet Street,any more than one of the artists on the staff of "Punch" couldpaint a fresco which should hold its own against Da Vinci's LastSupper. Michael Angelo again and Titian would have faileddisastrously at modern illustration. They had no more sense ofhumour than a Hebrew prophet; they had no eye for the more trivialside of anything round about them. This aspect went in at one eyeand out at the other--and they lost more than ever poor Peter Belllost in the matter of primroses. I never can see what there was tofind fault with in that young man.

Fancy a street-Arab by Michael Angelo. Fancy even the result whichwould have ensued if he had tried to put the figures into theillustrations of this book. I should have been very sorry to lethim try his hand at it. To him a priest chucking a small boy underthe chin was simply non-existent. He did not care for it, and hadtherefore no eye for it. If the reader will turn to the copy of afresco of St. Christopher on p. 209, he will see the conventionaltreatment of the rocks on either side the saint. This was the bestthing the artist could do, and probably cost him no little trouble.Yet there were rocks all around him--little, in fact, else thanrock in those days; and the artist could have drawn them wellenough if it had occurred to him to try and do so. If he coulddraw St. Christopher, he could have drawn a rock; but he had aninterest in the one, and saw nothing in the other which made himthink it worth while to pay attention to it. What rocks were tohim, the common occurrences of everyday life were to those who aregenerally held to be the giants of painting. The result of thisneglect to kiss the soil--of this attempt to be always soaring--isthat these giants are for the most part now very uninteresting,while the smaller men who preceded them grow fresher and moredelightful yearly. It was not so with Handel and Shakespeare.Handel's

"Ploughman near at hand, whistling o'er the furrowed land,"

is intensely sympathetic, and his humour is admirable whenever hehas occasion for it.

Leonardo da Vinci is the only one of the giant Italian masters whoever tried to be humorous, and he failed completely: so, indeed,must any one if he tries to be humorous. We do not want this; weonly want them not to shut their eyes to by-play when it comes intheir way, and if they are giving us an account of what they haveseen, to tell us something about this too. I believe the older theworld grows, the better it enjoys a joke. The mediaeval jokegenerally was a heavy, lumbering old thing, only a little betterthan the classical one. Perhaps in those days life was harder thanit is now, and people if they looked at it at all closely dweltupon its soberer side. Certainly in humorous art, we may claim tobe not only principes, but facile principes. Nevertheless, theItalian comic journals are, some of them, admirably illustrated,though in a style quite different from our own; sometimes, also,they are beautifully coloured.

As regards painting, the last rays of the sunset of genuine art areto be found in the votive pictures at Locarno or Oropa, and in manya wayside chapel. In these, religious art still lingers as aliving language, however rudely spoken. In these alone is thestory told, not as in the Latin and Greek verses of the scholar,who thinks he has succeeded best when he has most concealed hisnatural manner of expressing himself, but by one who knows what hewants to say, and says it in his mother-tongue, shortly, andwithout caring whether or not his words are in accordance withacademic rules. I regret to see photography being introduced forvotive purposes, and also to detect in some places a disposition onthe part of the authorities to be a little ashamed of thesepictures and to place them rather out of sight.

Sometimes in a little country village, as at Doera near Mesocco,there is a modern fresco on a chapel in which the old spiritappears, with its absolute indifference as to whether it wasridiculous or no, but such examples are rare.

Sometimes, again, I have even thought I have detected a ray ofsunset upon a milkman's window-blind in London, and once upon anundertaker's, but it was too faint a ray to read by. The bestthing of the kind that I have seen in London is the picture of thelady who is cleaning knives with Mr. Spong's patent knife-cleaner,in his shop window nearly opposite Day & Martin's in Holborn. Itfalls a long way short, however, of a good Italian votive picture:but it has the advantage of moving.

I knew of a little girl once, rather less than four years old,whose uncle had promised to take her for a drive in a carriage withhim, and had failed to do so. The child was found soon afterwardson the stairs weeping, and being asked what was the matter,replied, "Mans is all alike." This is Giottesque. I often thinkof it as I look upon Italian votive pictures. The meaning is sosound in spite of the expression being so defective--if, indeed,expression can be defective when it has so well conveyed themeaning.

I knew, again, an old lady whose education had been neglected inher youth. She came into a large fortune, and at some forty yearsof age put herself under the best masters. She once said to me asfollows, speaking very slowly and allowing a long time between eachpart of the sentence;--"You see," she said, "the world, and allthat it contains, is wrapped up in such curious forms, that it isonly by a knowledge of human nature, that we can rightly tell whatto say, to do, or to admire." I copied the sentence into mynotebook immediately on taking my leave. It is like an academypicture.

But to return to the Italians. The question is, how has thedeplorable falling-off in Italian painting been caused? And bydoing what may we again get Bellinis and Andrea Mantegnas as in oldtime? The fault does not lie in any want of raw material: thedrawings I have already given prove this. Nor, again, does it liein want of taking pains. The modern Italian painter frets himselfto the full as much as his predecessor did--if the truth wereknown, probably a great deal more. It does not lie in want ofschooling or art education. For the last three hundred years, eversince the Carracci opened their academy at Bologna, there has beenno lack of art education in Italy. Curiously enough, the date ofthe opening of the Bolognese Academy coincides as nearly as may bewith the complete decadence of Italian painting.

This is an example of the way in which Italian boys begin their arteducation now. The drawing which I reproduce here was given me bythe eminent sculptor, Professor Vela, as the work of a lad oftwelve years old, and as doing credit alike to the school where thelad was taught and to the pupil himself. {22}

So it undoubtedly does. It shows as plainly the receptiveness anddocility of the modern Italian, as the illustrations given aboveshow his freshness and naivete when left to himself. The drawingis just such as we try to get our own young people to do, and fewEnglish elementary schools in a small country town would succeed inturning out so good a one. I have nothing, therefore, but praiseboth for the pupil and the teacher; but about the system whichmakes such teachers and such pupils commendable, I am moresceptical. That system trains boys to study other people's worksrather than nature, and, as Leonardo da Vinci so well says, itmakes them nature's grandchildren and not her children. The boywho did the drawing given above is not likely to produce good workin later life. He has been taught to see nature with an old man'seyes at once, without going through the embryonic stages. He hasnever said his "mans is all alike," and by twenty will be paintinglike my old friend's long academic sentence. All his individualityhas been crushed out of him.

I will now give a reproduction of the frontispiece to Avogadro'swork on the sanctuary of S. Michele, from which I have alreadyquoted; it is a very pretty and effective piece of work, but thosewho are good enough to turn back to p. 93, and to believe that Ihave drawn carefully, will see how disappointing Avogadro'sfrontispiece must be to those who hold, as most of us will, that adraughtsman's first business is to put down what he sees, and tolet prettiness take care of itself. The main features, indeed, canstill be traced, but they have become as transformed and lifelessas rudimentary organs. Such a frontispiece, however, is the almostinevitable consequence of the system of training that will makeboys of twelve do drawings like the one given on p. 147.

If half a dozen young Italians could be got together with a tastefor drawing like that shown by the authors of the sketches on pp.136, 137, 138; if they had power to add to their number; if theywere allowed to see paintings and drawings done up to the year A.D.1510, and votive pictures and the comic papers; if they were leftwith no other assistance than this, absolutely free to pleasethemselves, and could be persuaded not to try and please any oneelse, I believe that in fifty years we should have all that wasever done repeated with fresh naivete, and as much moredelightfully than even by the best old masters, as these are moredelightful than anything we know of in classic painting. The youngplants keep growing up abundantly every day--look at Bastianini,dead not ten years since--but they are browsed down by theacademies. I remember there came out a book many years ago withthe title, "What becomes of all the clever little children?" Inever saw the book, but the title is pertinent.

Any man who can write, can draw to a not inconsiderable extent.Look at the Bayeux tapestry; yet Matilda probably never had adrawing lesson in her life. See how well prisoner after prisonerin the Tower of London has cut this or that out in the stone of hisprison wall, without, in all probability, having ever tried hishand at drawing before. Look at my friend Jones, who has severalillustrations in this book. The first year he went abroad with mehe could hardly draw at all. He was no year away from England morethan three weeks. How did he learn? On the old principle, if I amnot mistaken. The old principle was for a man to be doingsomething which he was pretty strongly bent on doing, and to get amuch younger one to help him. The younger paid nothing forinstruction, but the elder took the work, as long as the relationof master and pupil existed between them. I, then, was makingillustrations for this book, and got Jones to help me. I let himsee what I was doing, and derive an idea of the sort of thing Iwanted, and then left him alone--beyond giving him the same kind ofsmall criticism that I expected from himself--but I appropriatedhis work. That is the way to teach, and the result was that in anincredibly short time Jones could draw. The taking the work is asine qua non. If I had not been going to have his work, Jones, inspite of all his quickness, would probably have been rather slowerin learning to draw. Being paid in money is nothing like so good.

This is the system of apprenticeship versus the academic system.The academic system consists in giving people the rules for doingthings. The apprenticeship system consists in letting them do it,with just a trifle of supervision. "For all a rhetorician'srules," says my great namesake, "teach nothing, but to name histools;" and academic rules generally are much the same as therhetorician's. Some men can pass through academies unscathed, butthey are very few, and in the main the academic influence is abaleful one, whether exerted in a university or a school. Whileyoung men at universities are being prepared for their entry intolife, their rivals have already entered it. The most universityand examination ridden people in the world are the Chinese, andthey are the least progressive.

Men should learn to draw as they learn conveyancing: they shouldgo into a painter's studio and paint on his pictures. I am toldthat half the conveyances in the country are drawn by pupils; thereis no more mystery about painting than about conveyancing--not halfin fact, I should think, so much. One may ask, How can thebeginner paint, or draw conveyances, till he has learnt how to doso? The answer is, How can he learn, without at any rate trying todo? If he likes his subject, he will try: if he tries, he willsoon succeed in doing something which shall open a door. It doesnot matter what a man does; so long as he does it with theattention which affection engenders, he will come to see his way tosomething else. After long waiting he will certainly find one dooropen, and go through it. He will say to himself that he can neverfind another. He has found this, more by luck than cunning, butnow he is done. Yet by and by he will see that there is ONE moresmall, unimportant door which he had overlooked, and he proceedsthrough this too. If he remains now for a long while and sees noother, do not let him fret; doors are like the kingdom of heaven,they come not by observation, least of all do they come by forcing:let them just go on doing what comes nearest, but doing itattentively, and a great wide door will one day spring intoexistence where there had been no sign of one but a little timepreviously. Only let him be always doing something, and let himcross himself now and again, for belief in the wondrous efficacy ofcrosses and crossing is the corner-stone of the creed of theevolutionist. Then after years--but not probably till after agreat many--doors will open up all round, so many and so wide thatthe difficulty will not be to find a door, but rather to obtain themeans of even hurriedly surveying a portion of those that standinvitingly open.

I know that just as good a case can be made out for the other side.It may be said as truly that unless a student is incessantly on thewatch for doors he will never see them, and that unless he isincessantly pressing forward to the kingdom of heaven he will neverfind it--so that the kingdom does come by observation. It is withthis as with everything else--there must be a harmonious fusing oftwo principles which are in flat contradiction to one another.

The question whether it is better to abide quiet and take advantageof opportunities that come, or to go further afield in search ofthem, is one of the oldest which living beings have had to dealwith. It was on this that the first great schism or heresy arosein what was heretofore the catholic faith of protoplasm. Theschism still lasts, and has resulted in two great sects--animalsand plants. The opinion that it is better to go in search of preyis formulated in animals; the other--that it is better on the wholeto stay at home and profit by what comes--in plants. Someintermediate forms still record to us the long struggle duringwhich the schism was not yet complete.

If I may be pardoned for pursuing this digression further, I wouldsay that it is the plants and not we who are the heretics. Therecan be no question about this; we are perfectly justified,therefore, in devouring them. Ours is the original and orthodoxbelief, for protoplasm is much more animal than vegetable; it ismuch more true to say that plants have descended from animals thananimals from plants. Nevertheless, like many other heretics,plants have thriven very fairly well. There are a great many ofthem, and as regards beauty, if not wit--of a limited kind indeed,but still wit--it is hard to say that the animal kingdom has theadvantage. The views of plants are sadly narrow; all dissentersare narrow-minded; but within their own bounds they know thedetails of their business sufficiently well--as well as though theykept the most nicely-balanced system of accounts to show them theirposition. They are eaten, it is true; to eat them is our bigotedand intolerant way of trying to convert them: eating is only aviolent mode of proselytising or converting; and we do convertthem--to good animal substance, of our own way of thinking. Butthen, animals are eaten too. They convert one another, almost asmuch as they convert plants. And an animal is no sooner dead thana plant will convert it back again. It is obvious, however, thatno schism could have been so long successful, without having a gooddeal to say for itself.

Neither party has been quite consistent. Who ever is or can be?Every extreme--every opinion carried to its logical end--will proveto be an absurdity. Plants throw out roots and boughs and leaves;this is a kind of locomotion; and as Dr. Erasmus Darwin long sincepointed out, they do sometimes approach nearly to what may becalled travelling; a man of consistent character will never look ata bough, a root, or a tendril without regarding it as a melancholyand unprincipled compromise. On the other hand, many animals aresessile, and some singularly successful genera, as spiders, are inthe main liers-in-wait. It may appear, however, on the whole, likereopening a settled question to uphold the principle of being busyand attentive over a small area, rather than going to and fro overa larger one, for a mammal like man, but I think most readers willbe with me in thinking that, at any rate as regards art andliterature, it is he who does his small immediate work mostcarefully who will find doors open most certainly to him, that willconduct him into the richest chambers.

Many years ago, in New Zealand, I used sometimes to accompany adray and team of bullocks who would have to be turned loose atnight that they might feed. There were no hedges or fences then,so sometimes I could not find my team in the morning, and had noclue to the direction in which they had gone. At first I used totry and throw my soul into the bullocks' souls, so as to divine ifpossible what they would be likely to have done, and would thenride off ten miles in the wrong direction. People used in thosedays to lose their bullocks sometimes for a week or fortnight--whenthey perhaps were all the time hiding in a gully hard by the placewhere they were turned out. After some time I changed my tactics.On losing my bullocks I would go to the nearest accommodationhouse, and stand occasional drinks to travellers. Some one wouldere long, as a general rule, turn up who had seen the bullocks.This case does not go quite on all fours with what I have beensaying above, inasmuch as I was not very industrious in my limitedarea; but the standing drinks and inquiring was being asindustrious as the circumstances would allow.

To return, universities and academies are an obstacle to thefinding of doors in later life; partly because they push theiryoung men too fast through doorways that the universities haveprovided, and so discourage the habit of being on the look-out forothers; and partly because they do not take pains enough to makesure that their doors are bona fide ones. If, to change themetaphor, an academy has taken a bad shilling, it is seldom veryscrupulous about trying to pass it on. It will stick to it thatthe shilling is a good one as long as the police will let it. Iwas very happy at Cambridge; when I left it I thought I never againcould be so happy anywhere else; I shall ever retain a most kindlyrecollection both of Cambridge and of the school where I passed myboyhood; but I feel, as I think most others must in middle life,that I have spent as much of my maturer years in unlearning as inlearning.

The proper course is for a boy to begin the practical business oflife many years earlier than he now commonly does. He should beginat the very bottom of a profession; if possible of one which hisfamily has pursued before him--for the professions will assuredlyone day become hereditary. The ideal railway director will havebegun at fourteen as a railway porter. He need not be a porter formore than a week or ten days, any more than he need have been atadpole more than a short time; but he should take a turn inpractice, though briefly, at each of the lower branches in theprofession. The painter should do just the same. He should beginby setting his employer's palette and cleaning his brushes. As forthe good side of universities, the proper preservative of this isto be found in the club.

If, then, we are to have a renaissance of art, there must be acomplete standing aloof from the academic system. That system hashad time enough. Where and who are its men? Can it point to onepainter who can hold his own with the men of, say, from 1450 to1550? Academies will bring out men who can paint hair very likehair, and eyes very like eyes, but this is not enough. This isgrammar and deportment; we want it and a kindly nature, and thesecannot be got from academies. As far as mere TECHNIQUE isconcerned, almost every one now can paint as well as is in theleast desirable. The same mutatis mutandis holds good with writingas with painting. We want less word-painting and fine phrases, andmore observation at first-hand. Let us have a periodicalillustrated by people who cannot draw, and written by people whocannot write (perhaps, however, after all, we have some), but wholook and think for themselves, and express themselves just as theyplease,--and this we certainly have not. Every contributor shouldbe at once turned out if he or she is generally believed to havetried to do something which he or she did not care about trying todo, and anything should be admitted which is the outcome of agenuine liking. People are always good company when they are doingwhat they really enjoy. A cat is good company when it is purring,or a dog when it is wagging its tail.

The sketching clubs up and down the country might form the nucleusof such a society, provided all professional men were rigorouslyexcluded. As for the old masters, the better plan would be nevereven to look at one of them, and to consign Raffaelle, along withPlato, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Dante, Goethe, and two others,neither of them Englishmen, to limbo, as the Seven Humbugs ofChristendom.

While we are about it, let us leave off talking about "art forart's sake." Who is art that it should have a sake? A work of artshould be produced for the pleasure it gives the producer, and thepleasure he thinks it will give to a few of whom he is fond; butneither money nor people whom he does not know personally should bethought of. Of course such a society as I have proposed would notremain incorrupt long. "Everything that grows, holds in perfectionbut a little moment." The members would try to imitateprofessional men in spite of their rules, or, if they escaped thisand after a while got to paint well, they would become dogmatic,and a rebellion against their authority would be as necessary erelong as it was against that of their predecessors: but the balanceon the whole would be to the good.

Professional men should be excluded, if for no other reason yet forthis, that they know too much for the beginner to be en rapportwith them. It is the beginner who can help the beginner, as it isthe child who is the most instructive companion for another child.The beginner can understand the beginner, but the cross between himand the proficient performer is too wide for fertility. It savoursof impatience, and is in flat contradiction to the first principlesof biology. It does a beginner positive harm to look at themasterpieces of the great executionists, such as Rembrandt orTurner.

If one is climbing a very high mountain which will tax all one'sstrength, nothing fatigues so much as casting upward glances to thetop, nothing encourages so much as casting downward glances. Thetop seems never to draw nearer; the parts that we have passedretreat rapidly. Let a water-colour student go and see the drawingby Turner, in the basement of our National Gallery, dated 1787.This is the sort of thing for him, not to copy, but to look at fora minute or two now and again. It will show him nothing aboutpainting, but it may serve to teach him not to overtax hisstrength, and will prove to him that the greatest masters inpainting, as in everything else, begin by doing work which is noway superior to that of their neighbours. A collection of theearliest known works of the greatest men would be much more usefulto the student than any number of their maturer works, for it wouldshow him that he need not worry himself because his work does notlook clever, or as silly people say, "show power."

The secrets of success are affection for the pursuit chosen, a flatrefusal to be hurried or to pass anything as understood which isnot understood, and an obstinacy of character which shall make thestudent's friends find it less trouble to let him have his own waythan to bend him into theirs. Our schools and academies oruniversities are covertly, but essentially, radical institutionsand abhorrent to the genius of Conservatism. Their sin is the trueradical sin of being in too great a hurry, and of believing inshort cuts too soon. But it must be remembered that thisproposition, like every other, wants tempering with a slightinfusion of its direct opposite.

I said in an early part of this book that the best test to knowwhether or no one likes a picture is to ask one's self whether onewould like to look at it if one was quite sure one was alone. Thebest test for a painter as to whether he likes painting his pictureis to ask himself whether he should like to paint it if he wasquite sure that no one except himself, and the few of whom he wasvery fond, would ever see it. If he can answer this question inthe affirmative, he is all right; if he cannot, he is all wrong. Iwill close these remarks with an illustration which will show hownearly we can approach the early Florentines even now--when nobodyis looking at us. I do not know who Mr. Pollard is. I never heardof him till I came across a cheap lithograph of his Funeral of TomMoody in the parlour of a village inn. I should not think he everwas an R.A., but he has approached as nearly as the differencebetween the geniuses of the two countries will allow, to the spiritof the painters who painted in the Campo Santo at Pisa. Look,again, at Garrard, at the close of the last century. We generallysucceed with sporting or quasi-sporting subjects, and our cheapcoloured coaching and hunting subjects are almost always good, andoften very good indeed. We like these things: therefore weobserve them; therefore we soon become able to express them.Historical and costume pictures we have no genuine love for; we donot, therefore, go beyond repeating commonplaces concerning them.

I must reserve other remarks upon this subject for anotheroccasion.

CHAPTER XIII--Viu, Fucine, and S. Ignazio

I must now return to my young friend at Groscavallo. I havepublished his drawings without his permission, having unfortunatelylost his name and address, and being unable therefore to apply tohim. I hope that, should they ever meet his eye, he will acceptthis apology and the assurance of my most profound consideration.

Delighted as I had been with his proposed illustrations, I thoughtI had better hear some of the letterpress, so I begged him to readme his MS. My time was short, and he began at once. The fewintroductory pages were very nice, but there was nothingparticularly noticeable about them; when, however, he came to hisdescription of the place where we now were, he spoke of a beautifulyoung lady as attracting his attention on the evening of hisarrival. It seemed that she was as much struck with him as he withher, and I thought we were going to have a romance, when heproceeded as follows: "We perceived that we were sympathetic, andin less than a quarter of an hour had exchanged the most solemnvows that we would never marry one another." "What?" said I,hardly able to believe my ears, "will you kindly read those lastwords over again?" He did so, slowly and distinctly; I caught thembeyond all power of mistake, and they were as I have given themabove:- "We perceived that we were sympathetic, and in less than aquarter of an hour had exchanged the most solemn vows that we wouldnever marry one another." While I was rubbing my eyes and makingup my mind whether I had stumbled upon a great satirist or no, Iheard a voice from below--"Signor Butler, Signor Butler, la vetturae pronta." I had therefore to leave my doubt unsolved, but all thetime as we drove down the valley I had the words above quotedringing in my head. If ever any of my readers come across the bookitself--for I should hope it will be published--I should be verygrateful to them if they will direct my attention to it.

Another day I went to Ceres, and returned on foot via S. Ignazio.S. Ignazio is a famous sanctuary on the very top of a mountain,like that of Sammichele; but it is late, the St. Ignatius being St.Ignatius Loyola, and not the apostolic father. I got my dinner ata village inn at the foot of the mountain, and from the windowcaught sight of a fresco upon the wall of a chapel a few yards off.There was a companion to it hardly less interesting, but I had nottime to sketch it. I do not know what the one I give is intendedto represent. St. Ignatius is upon a rock, and is pleased withsomething, but there is nothing to show what it is, except hisattitude, which seems to say, "Senza far fatica,"--"You see I cando it quite easily," or, "There is no deception." Nor do we easilygather what it is that the Roman centurion is saying to St.Ignatius. I cannot make up my mind whether he is merely warninghim to beware of the reaction, or whether he is a littlescandalised.

From this village I went up the mountain to the sanctuary of S.Ignazio itself, which looks well from the distance, and commands astriking view, but contains nothing of interest, except a few nicevotive pictures.

From Lanzo I went to Viu, a summer resort largely frequented by theTurinese, but rarely visited by English people. There is a goodinn at Viu--the one close to where the public conveyance stops--andthe neighbourhood is enchanting. The little village on the crestof the hill in the distance, to the left of the church, as shown onthe preceding page, is called the Colma di S. Giovanni, and is wellworth a visit. In spring, before the grass is cut, the pasturesmust be even better than when I saw them in August, and they werethen still of almost incredible beauty.

I went to S. Giovanni by the directest way--descending, that is, tothe level of the Stura, crossing it, and then going straight up themountain. I returned by a slight detour so as to take the villageof Fucine, a frazione of Viu a little higher up the river. I foundmany picturesque bits; among them the one which I give on the nextpage. It was a grand festa; first they had had mass, then therehad been the funzioni, which I never quite understand, andthenceforth till sundown there was a public ball on the bowlingground of a little inn on the Viu side of the bridge. Theprincipal inn is on the other side. It was here I went and ordereddinner. The landlady brought me a minestra, or hodge-podge soup,full of savoury vegetables, and very good; a nice cutlet fried inbread-crumbs, bread and butter ad libitum, and half a bottle ofexcellent wine. She brought all together on a tray, and put themdown on the table. "It'll come to a franc," said she, "in all, butplease to pay first." I did so, of course, and she was satisfied.A day or two afterwards I went to the same inn, hoping to dine aswell and cheaply as before; but I think they must have discoveredthat I was a forestiere inglese in the meantime, for they did notmake me pay first, and charged me normal prices.

What pretty words they have! While eating my dinner I wanted asmall plate and asked for it. The landlady changed the word I hadused, and told a girl to bring me a tondino. A tondino is anabbreviation of rotondino, a "little round thing." A plate is atondo, a small plate a tondino. The delicacy of expression whichtheir diminutives and intensitives give is untranslateable. Oneday I was asking after a waiter whom I had known in previous years,but who was ill. I said I hoped he was not badly off. "Oh dear,no," was the answer; "he has a discreta posizionina"--"a snuglittle sum put by." "Is the road to such and such a placedifficult?" I once inquired. "Un tantino," was the answer. "Eversuch a very little," I suppose, is as near as we can get to this.At one inn I asked whether I could have my linen back from the washby a certain time, and was told it was impossibilissimo. I have anItalian friend long resident in England who often introducesEnglish words when talking with me in Italian. Thus I have heardhim say that such and such a thing is tanto cheapissimo. As fortheir gestures, they are inimitable. To say nothing of the prettylittle way in which they say "no," by moving the forefingerbackwards and forwards once or twice, they have a hundred movementsto save themselves the trouble of speaking, which say what theyhave to say better than any words can do. It is delightful to seean Italian move his hand in such way as to show you that you havegot to go round a corner. Gesture is easier both to make and tounderstand than speech is. Speech is a late acquisition, and incritical moments is commonly discarded in favour of gesture, whichis older and more habitual.

I once saw an Italian explaining something to another and tappinghis nose a great deal. He became more and more confidential, andthe more confidential he became, the more he tapped, till hisfinger seemed to become glued to, and almost grow into his nose.At last the supreme moment came. He drew the finger down, pressingit closely against his lower lip, so as to drag it all down andshow his gums and the roots of his teeth. "There," he seemed tosay, "you now know all: consider me as turned inside out: mymucous membrane is before you."

At Fucine, and indeed in all the valleys hereabout, spinning-wheelsare not uncommon. I also saw a woman sitting in her room with thedoor opening on to the street, weaving linen at a hand-loom. Thewoman and the hand-loom were both very old and rickety. The firstand the last specimens of anything, whether animal or vegetableorganism, or machine, or institution, are seldom quitesatisfactory. Some five or six years ago I saw an old gentlemansitting outside the St. Lawrence Hall at Montreal, in Canada, andwearing a pigtail, but it was not a good pigtail; and when theScotch baron killed the last wolf in Scotland, it was probably aweak, mangy old thing, capable of little further mischief.

Presently I walked a mile or two up the river, and met a godfathercoming along with a cradle on his shoulder; he was followed by twowomen, one carrying some long wax candles, and the other somethingwrapped up in a piece of brown paper; they were going to get thechild christened at Fucine. Soon after I met a priest, and bowed,as a matter of course. In towns or places where many foreignerscome and go this is unnecessary, but in small out-of-the-way placesone should take one's hat off to the priest. I mention thisbecause many Englishmen do not know that it is expected of them,and neglect the accustomed courtesy through ignorance. Surely,even here in England, if one is in a small country village, offone's beat, and meets the clergyman, it is more polite than not totake off one's hat.

Viu is one of the places from which pilgrims ascend the RoccaMelone at the beginning of August. This is one of the most popularand remarkable pilgrimages of North Italy; the Rocca Melone is11,000 feet high, and forms a peak so sharp, that there is room forlittle else than the small wooden chapel which stands at the top ofit. There is no accommodation whatever, except at some roughbarracks (so I have been told) some thousands of feet below thesummit. These, I was informed, are sometimes so crowded that thepeople doze standing, and the cold at night is intense, unlessunder the shelter just referred to; yet some five or six thousandpilgrims ascend on the day and night of the festa--chiefly fromSusa, but also from all parts of the valleys of the Dora and theStura. They leave Susa early in the morning, camp out or getshelter in the barracks that evening, reaching the chapel at thetop of the Rocca Melone next day. I have not made the ascentmyself, but it would probably be worth making by one who did notmind the fatigue.

I may mention that thatch is not uncommon in the Stura valley. Inthe Val Mastallone, and more especially between Civiasco (aboveVarallo) and Orta, thatch is more common still, and the thatchingis often very beautifully done. Thatch in a stone country is anindication of German, or at any rate Cisalpine descent, and isamong the many proofs of the extent to which German races crossedthe Alps and spread far down over Piedmont and Lombardy. I wasmore struck with traces of German influence on the path from Pellaon the Lago d'Orta, to the Colma on the way to Varallo, thanperhaps anywhere else. The churches have a tendency to have purespires--a thing never seen in Italy proper; clipped yews and box-trees are common; there are lime-trees in the churchyards, andthatch is the rule, not the exception. At Rimella in the ValMastallone, not far off, German is still the current language. AsI sat sketching, a woman came up to me, and said, "Was machen sic?"as a matter of course. Rimella is the highest village in itsvalley, yet if one crosses the saddle at the head of the valley,one does not descend upon a German-speaking district; one descendson the Val Anzasca, where Italian is universally spoken. Untilrecently German was the language of many other villages at theheads of valleys, even though these valleys were themselvesentirely surrounded by Italian-speaking people. At Alagna in theVal Sesia, German is still spoken.

Whatever their origin, however, the people are now thoroughlyItalianised. Nevertheless, as I have already said, it is strangewhat a number of people one meets among them, whom most peoplewould unhesitatingly pronounce to be English if asked to name theirnationality.

CHAPTER XIV--Sanctuary of Oropa

From Lanzo I went back to Turin, where Jones again joined me, andwe resolved to go and see the famous sanctuary of Oropa nearBiella. Biella is about three hours' railway journey from Turin.It is reached by a branch line of some twenty miles, that leavesthe main line between Turin and Milan at Santhia. Except the viewof the Alps, which in clear weather cannot be surpassed, there isnothing of very particular interest between Turin and Santhia, norneed Santhia detain the traveller longer than he can help. Biellawe found to consist of an upper and a lower town--the upper, as maybe supposed, being the older. It is at the very junction of theplain and the mountains, and is a thriving place, with more of thebusy air of an English commercial town than perhaps any other ofits size in North Italy. Even in the old town large rambling oldpalazzi have been converted into factories, and the click of theshuttle is heard in unexpected places.

We were unable to find that Biella contains any remarkable picturesor other works of art, though they are doubtless to be found bythose who have the time to look for them. There is a very finecampanile near the post-office, and an old brick baptistery, alsohard by; but the church to which both campanile and baptisterybelonged, has, as the author of "Round about London" so well says,been "utterly restored;" it cannot be uglier than what we sometimesdo, but it is quite as ugly. We found an Italian opera company inBiella; peeping through a grating, as many others were doing, wewatched the company rehearsing "La forza del destino," which was tobe given later in the week.

The morning after our arrival, we took the daily diligence forOropa, leaving Biella at eight o'clock. Before we were clear ofthe town we could see the long line of the hospice, and the chapelsdotted about near it, high up in a valley at some distance off;presently we were shown another fine building some eight or ninemiles away, which we were told was the sanctuary of Graglia. Aboutthis time the pictures and statuettes of the Madonna began tochange their hue and to become black--for the sacred image of Oropabeing black, all the Madonnas in her immediate neighbourhood are ofthe same complexion. Underneath some of them is written, "Nigrasum sed sum formosa," which, as a rule, was more true as regardsthe first epithet than the second.

It was not market-day, but streams of people were coming to thetown. Many of them were pilgrims returning from the sanctuary, butmore were bringing the produce of their farms, or the work of theirhands for sale. We had to face a steady stream of chairs, whichwere coming to town in baskets upon women's heads. Each basketcontained twelve chairs, though whether it is correct to say thatthe basket contained the chairs--when the chairs were all, so tosay, froth running over the top of the basket--is a point I cannotsettle. Certainly we had never seen anything like so many chairsbefore, and felt almost as though we had surprised nature in thelaboratory wherefrom she turns out the chair supply of the world.The road continued through a succession of villages almost runninginto one another for a long way after Biella was passed, buteverywhere we noticed the same air of busy thriving industry whichwe had seen in Biella itself. We noted also that a preponderanceof the people had light hair, while that of the children wasfrequently nearly white, as though the infusion of German blood washere stronger even than usual. Though so thickly peopled, thecountry was of great beauty. Near at hand were the most exquisitepastures close shaven after their second mowing, gay with autumnalcrocuses, and shaded with stately chestnuts; beyond were ruggedmountains, in a combe on one of which we saw Oropa itself nowgradually nearing; behind and below, many villages with vineyardsand terraces cultivated to the highest perfection; further on,Biella already distant, and beyond this a "big stare," as anAmerican might say, over the plains of Lombardy from Turin toMilan, with the Apennines from Genoa to Bologna hemming thehorizon. On the road immediate before us, we still faced the samesteady stream of chairs flowing ever Biella-ward.

After a couple of hours the houses became more rare; we got abovethe sources of the chair-stream; bits of rough rock began to jutout from the pasture; here and there the rhododendron began to showitself by the roadside; the chestnuts left off along a line aslevel as though cut with a knife; stone-roofed cascine began toabound, with goats and cattle feeding near them; the booths of thereligious trinket-mongers increased; the blind, halt, and maimedbecame more importunate, and the foot-passengers were more entirelycomposed of those whose object was, or had been, a visit to thesanctuary itself. The numbers of these pilgrims--generally intheir Sunday's best, and often comprising the greater part of afamily--were so great, though there was no special festa, as totestify to the popularity of the institution. They generallywalked barefoot, and carried their shoes and stockings; theirbaggage consisted of a few spare clothes, a little food, and a potor pan or two to cook with. Many of them looked very tired, andhad evidently tramped from long distances--indeed, we saw costumesbelonging to valleys which could not be less than two or three daysdistant. They were almost invariably quiet, respectable, anddecently clad, sometimes a little merry, but never noisy, and noneof them tipsy. As we travelled along the road, we must have fallenin with several hundreds of these pilgrims coming and going; nor isthis likely to be an extravagant estimate, seeing that the hospicecan make up more than five thousand beds. By eleven we were at thesanctuary itself.

Fancy a quiet upland valley, the floor of which is about the sameheight as the top of Snowdon, shut in by lofty mountains upon threesides, while on the fourth the eye wanders at will over the plainsbelow. Fancy finding a level space in such a valley watered by abeautiful mountain stream, and nearly filled by a pile ofcollegiate buildings, not less important than those, we will say,of Trinity College, Cambridge. True, Oropa is not in the leastlike Trinity, except that one of its courts is large, grassy, has achapel and a fountain in it, and rooms all round it; but I do notknow how better to give a rough description of Oropa than bycomparing it with one of our largest English colleges.

The buildings consist of two main courts. The first comprises acouple of modern wings, connected by the magnificent facade of whatis now the second or inner court. This facade dates from about themiddle of the seventeenth century; its lowest storey is formed byan open colonnade, and the whole stands upon a raised terrace fromwhich a noble flight of steps descends into the outer court.

Ascending the steps and passing under the colonnade, we foundourselves in the second or inner court, which is a completequadrangle, and is, we were told, of rather older date than thefacade. This is the quadrangle which gives its collegiatecharacter to Oropa. It is surrounded by cloisters on three sides,on to which the rooms in which the pilgrims are lodged open--thoseat least that are on the ground-floor, for there are three storeys.The chapel, which was dedicated in the year 1600, juts out into thecourt upon the north-east side. On the north-west and south-westsides are entrances through which one may pass to the open country.The grass, at the time of our visit, was for the most part coveredwith sheets spread out to dry. They looked very nice, and, driedon such grass and in such an air, they must be delicious to sleepon. There is, indeed, rather an appearance as though it were aperpetual washing-day at Oropa, but this is not to be wondered atconsidering the numbers of comers and goers; besides, people inItaly do not make so much fuss about trifles as we do. If theywant to wash their sheets and dry them, they do not send them toEaling, but lay them out in the first place that comes handy, andnobody's bones are broken.

CHAPTER XV--Oropa (continued)

On the east side of the main block of buildings there is a grassyslope adorned with chapels that contain illustrating scenes in thehistory of the Virgin. These figures are of terra-cotta, for themost part life-size, and painted up to nature. In some cases, if Iremember rightly, they have hemp or flax for hair, as at Varallo,and throughout realism is aimed at as far as possible, not only inthe figures, but in the accessories. We have very little of thesame kind in England. In the Tower of London there is an effigy ofQueen Elizabeth going to the city to give thanks for the defeat ofthe Spanish Armada. This looks as if it might have been the workof some one of the Valsesian sculptors. There are also the figuresthat strike the quarters of Sir John Bennett's city clock inCheapside. The automatic movements of these last-named figureswould have struck the originators of the Varallo chapels with envy.They aimed at realism so closely that they would assuredly have hadrecourse to clockwork in some one or two of their chapels; I cannotdoubt, for example, that they would have eagerly welcomed the ideaof making the cock crow to Peter by a cuckoo-clock arrangement, ifit had been presented to them. This opens up the whole question ofrealism versus conventionalism in art--a subject much too large tobe treated here.

As I have said, the founders of these Italian chapels aimed atrealism. Each chapel was intended as an illustration, and thedesire was to bring the whole scene more vividly before thefaithful by combining the picture, the statue, and the effect of ascene upon the stage in a single work of art. The attempt would bean ambitious one, though made once only in a neighbourhood, but inmost of the places in North Italy where anything of the kind hasbeen done, the people have not been content with a singleillustration; it has been their scheme to take a mountain as thoughit had been a book or wall and cover it with illustrations. Insome cases--as at Orta, whose Sacro Monte is perhaps the mostbeautiful of all as regards the site itself--the failure iscomplete, but in some of the chapels at Varese and in many of thoseat Varallo, great works have been produced which have not yetattracted as much attention as they deserve. It may be doubted,indeed, whether there is a more remarkable work of art in NorthItaly than the Crucifixion chapel at Varallo, where the twenty-fivestatues, as well as the frescoes behind them, are (with theexception of the figure of Christ, which has been removed) byGaudenzio Ferrari. It is to be wished that some one of thesechapels--both chapel and sculptures--were reproduced at SouthKensington.

Varallo, which is undoubtedly the most interesting sanctuary inNorth Italy, has forty-four of these illustrative chapels; Varese,fifteen; Orta, eighteen; and Oropa, seventeen. No one is allowedto enter them, except when repairs are needed; but when these aregoing on, as is constantly the case, it is curious to look throughthe grating into the somewhat darkened interior, and to see aliving figure or two among the statues; a little motion on the partof a single figure seems to communicate itself to the rest and makethem all more animated. If the living figure does not move much,it is easy at first to mistake it for a terra-cotta one. At Orta,some years since, looking one evening into a chapel when the lightwas fading, I was surprised to see a saint whom I had not seenbefore; he had no glory except what shone from a very red nose; hewas smoking a short pipe, and was painting the Virgin Mary's face.The touch was a finishing one, put on with deliberation, slowly, sothat it was two or three seconds before I discovered that theinterloper was no saint.

The figures in the chapels at Oropa are not as good as the best ofthose at Varallo, but some of them are very nice notwithstanding.We liked the seventh chapel the best--the one which illustrates thesojourn of the Virgin Mary in the temple. It contains forty-fourfigures, and represents the Virgin on the point of completing hereducation as head girl at a high-toned academy for younggentlewomen. All the young ladies are at work making mitres forthe bishop, or working slippers in Berlin wool for the new curate,but the Virgin sits on a dais above the others on the same platformwith the venerable lady-principal, who is having passages read outto her from some standard Hebrew writer. The statues are the workof a local sculptor, named Aureggio, who lived at the end of theseventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth century.

The highest chapel must be a couple of hundred feet above the mainbuildings, and from near it there is an excellent bird's-eye viewof the sanctuary and the small plain behind; descending on to thislast, we entered the quadrangle from the north-west side andvisited the chapel in which the sacred image of the Madonna iscontained. We did not see the image itself, which is only exposedto public view on great occasions. It is believed to have beencarved by St. Luke the Evangelist. I must ask the reader tocontent himself with the following account of it which I take fromMarocco's work upon Oropa.:-

"That this statue of the Virgin is indeed by St. Luke is attestedby St. Eusebius, a man of eminent piety and no less enlightenedthan truthful. St. Eusebius discovered its origin by revelation;and the store which he set by it is proved by his shrinking from nodiscomforts in his carriage of it from a distant country, and byhis anxiety to put it in a place of great security. His desire,indeed, was to keep it in the spot which was most near and dear tohim, so that he might extract from it the higher incitement todevotion, and more sensible comfort in the midst of his austeritiesand apostolic labours.

"This truth is further confirmed by the quality of the wood fromwhich the statue is carved, which is commonly believed to be cedar;by the Eastern character of the work; by the resemblance both ofthe lineaments and the colour to those of other statues by St.Luke; by the tradition of the neighbourhood, which extends in anunbroken and well-assured line to the time of St. Eusebius himself;by the miracles that have been worked here by its presence, andelsewhere by its invocation, or even by indirect contact with it;by the miracles, lastly, which are inherent in the image itself,{23} and which endure to this day, such as is its immunity from allworm and from the decay which would naturally have occurred in itthrough time and damp--more especially in the feet, through therubbing of religious objects against them.